Chapters (50)
- Praise
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Teaser chapter
“It must have been tough,” he continued. “Very tough. Now that the trials are over, who wants to come and take a vacation here? I mean, Dachau’s not exactly Coney Island, is it? Of course, you could get lucky. You might get a few Jews who want to take a stroll down memory lane.”
“Get to the point,” I said.
“All right.” He swallowed his drink and palmed a gold cigarette case from the other pocket. “Herr Kommissar Gunther.”
I took the offered cigarette and let him light me with a match he snapped into life with a thumbnail while it was still only halfway up to my face.
“You want to be careful doing that,” I said. “You could spoil your manicure.”
“Or you could spoil it for me? Yes?”
“Maybe.”
He laughed. “Don’t get hard-boiled with me, pal,” he said. “It’s been tried. The krauts who tried it are still picking pieces of shell out of their mouths.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You don’t look like a tough guy. Or is that just this season’s look for tough guys?”
“What you know is of incidental importance to me, Bernie, old boy,” he said. “Let me tell you what I know, for a minute. I know a lot. How you and your wife came here from Berlin last fall, to help her old man run this hotel. How he killed himself just before Christmas and how she cracked up because of that. How you used to be a Kriminal Kommissar at the Alex in Berlin. A cop. Just like me.”
“You don’t look like a cop.”
“Thanks, I’ll take that as a compliment, Herr Kommissar.”
“That was ten years ago,” I said. “Mostly I was just an inspector. Or a private detective.”
The American jerked his head at the window. “The guy in the car is handcuffed to the steering wheel. He’s a war criminal. What your German newspapers would call a Red Jacket. During the war he was stationed here, at Dachau. He worked at the crematorium, burning bodies, for which he received a twenty-year sentence. You ask me, he deserved to hang. They all did. Then again, if he had been hanged he wouldn’t be outside now, helping me with my inquiries. And I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of meeting you.”